


You Will Be Me (The When I'm Gone Ontological Tautology Remaster)

by Nope



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-18
Updated: 2010-04-18
Packaged: 2017-10-09 00:27:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/81053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nope/pseuds/Nope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"But why?" Koschei demands.  "What really happened to Omega and Rassilon? What did Rassilon really do to Pythia? Who was the Other, if they even existed?  Why do so many races follow the Gallifreyan pattern of limbs and layout?  Where did we come from and why?  Who are we, really?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Will Be Me (The When I'm Gone Ontological Tautology Remaster)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [biichan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/biichan/gifts).
  * Inspired by [—"All You Doctors"—](https://archiveofourown.org/works/35854) by [biichan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/biichan/pseuds/biichan). 



'Art is long and Time is fleeting,  
     And our hearts, though stout and brave,  
Still, like muffled drums, are beating  
     Funeral marches to the grave.'

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW -  
'A Psalm of Life'  
 

_i_

"Why only twelve regenerations?" Koschei asks.

They're sat on the top of the tower of Likelihood, right under the dome that encloses the Capitol. Beyond its curves, the mountains of Solace and Sorrow stretch from the silver forests of Kaden-Wood trees up to the burnt umber sky. Twin suns dip below the horizon as Pazithi rises, caught in interminable, unrelenting orbits.

Theta shrugs, fingers hovering over a Jack before instead he moves the Daisy up two boards. "Why not, mm?"

"That's not an answer." Koschei moves his Black Star down to the seventh plane. "Check. I just don't see why it doesn't bother you that every question is answered with 'that's the way it is' or 'you'll understand when you're older' or--"

"I'll explain later," Theta offers, smiling a little, resting a finger on the Gold Star. Koschei tuts, and the finger withdraws. "Things are the way they are because Rassilon made them that way."

"But why?" Koschei demands. "What really happened to Omega and Rassilon? What did Rassilon really do to Pythia? Who was the Other, if they even existed? Why do so many races follow the Gallifreyan pattern of limbs and layout? Where did we come from and why? Who are we, really?"

Theta slow blinks at him. "Do you really want to spend another week in the catacombs, clearing up after the pig-rats? You're chasing an illusion, my friend, a dream, a fantasy--"

"Everyone talks in circles," Koschei hisses. "I just want to know why. Why is it like this? Why the restriction? Why the limitation? Why this much and no further?"

He glares at Theta, as if demanding answers. When Theta just looks back with equanimity, Koschei growls and shoves himself away from the game sphere. Waving Theta's noise of protestation off, Koschei storms away down the spiralling staircase towards the Panopticon.

"Ace," Theta mutters, and flicks an Emperor over.  
 

_iii_

"My dear fellow," the Doctor says, chidingly, shoulders shifting a little under his opera cape. "Please, sit, sit." He smiles disarmingly at the UNIT men. "Perhaps one of you strapping fellows could see about bringing us some nice tea, mm?"

"We'll wait just outside," Yates says, "with our guns."

The Doctor and the Master ignore both this and the men's exit. Tools and electronic miscellanea cover the worktop.

"I'm, ah, sorry about the mess," the Doctor says, scratching awkwardly at his head. "I was working on a little side-project, just to keep my hand in."

The Master skims the table with a practised eye. "A positronic robot, in this day and age?"

"It is rather primitive," the Doctor chuckles, going back to fiddling with the construction. "The Brigadier made me fill the place with extinguishers before I started. He can brew up to quite a storm."

The Master smiles. "You always did like explosions."

The Doctor shoots him a quizzical look, and the Master ignores it, huffing and holding a hand out for the screwdriver. The Doctor chuckles as he hands it over. The Master begins sorting through parts, glaring when the Doctor takes to hovering at his shoulder. The Doctor just grins.

"They've found somewhere for you," he says. "Maximum Security, of course, but I'm given to understand it will have a nice view of the sea."

"Lovely," the Master says. "Look, you've over-loaded the articulators. We'll have to separate these into parallel systems instead." The Doctor made agreeable noises. "And what will you do with it when it's done? Make it dance? Teach it to sing?"

"I was going to have it bring me tea," the Doctor says thoughtfully, "but I could. I do like a bit of singing, you know, and this body has a lovely voice for it. It's a shame good portable personal stereos won't be invented for at least another decade."

"Those dreadful ghetto-blasters," the Master says, shuddering delicately. "I really don't know why you like this species so much, Doctor. It's rather off-putting the way they look so much like us, and their planet is rather unfortunately positioned -- for them, not for me. I see that look of yours, Doctor. You never change."

"Do you?" the Doctor asks. "Take that oscillator back out of your sleeve, there's a good chap."

"It really doesn't matter what words you use," the Master says, smiling a little and doing so. "The tune remains the same." He drummed his fingers rhythmically on the robots makeshift optics. "Body after body, face after face -- don't you get bored? Doctor?"

"Lets take a look at those articulators," the Doctor says.  
 

_ix-a_

"Rassilon's seal," the Master says.

"Do you have to?" the Doctor complains, snatching his flask up and taking a hit before working his way back under the console.

"Well, let me see." The Master pretends to muse. "Perhaps I could go outside and have a jolly stroll around in the sun. Or you could turn me off again; I do so enjoy being a disembodied presence spread out in the event horizon of the TARDIS's Eye of Harmony collector."

The Doctor makes no reply, although the sounds from inside the console become more forceful.

"Rassilon's seal," the Master repeats smugly, "is the perfect symbol of your Time Lords; endlessly reflective, twisted circles, forever folding back on themselves." His fingers trace figure eights in the dust on the console: moebius patterns.

"You're still a Time Lord," the Doctor says. "As much of one as I am."

"How tiresome." The Master plucks an imaginary speck of dust from his impeccable suit. If he concentrates hard enough, he can hear the servos moving under the plastiskin covering the retrofitted service droid. A toy train hoots, somewhere above him. "You should have gone with Coral."

"Were you trying to make a point?" the Doctor snips.

The Master's lips curl in something like a smile. "The Time Lords foresee every tragedy, every oncoming storm--" There's a snort from beneath the console. "--and they erase it. Like sending you back to blow up the Daleks. Like arranging it so that you would have access to the stellar manipulator to destroy Skaro. Always looping back on themselves, so that nothing is ever unusual, unseen or unknown. 'The moment has been prepared for.'"

There's a thump under the console. The Doctor hisses a curse.

"Every perturbation is smoothed out, every paradox unravelled, every circle closed. Nothing ever changes, and so nothing must ever change. Stagnant, they create stagnation. Like Rassilon, they return always to the centre."

"We," says the Doctor, clambering out into view. He slams a fist down on a control pump and their virtual game board frizzles back into life.

"It was your turn, I believe," the Master says. The Doctor nods, eyes on the semi-translucent boards. After a while, the Master smiles his almost smile again. "Remember Perivale? How often have we come back to that?"

The Doctor takes another drink, ignoring the question.

"'If we fight like animals, we will die like animals!'" The Master chuckles. "As if that was a bad thing."

"What do you want? Chaos, death and suffering? Let the universe fall to the Daleks?" the Doctor sneers.

"Why not? Let them burn, Doctor. Let them all burn and just walk away. Step off the seal. But you won't, will you? We choose our own names, we change our faces, we create ourselves in our own image and you -- that's what you are, isn't it? The man who never would. The man who never _could_."

"There's always a choice," the Doctor says, flatly. It's as true as anything is. He lifts his flask to his lips and then lowers it again without drinking.

"Such absolute faith, broken every time. Such is victory. This alternate won't stand," the Master says, and then he smiles. "But you already know that, of course."

The Doctor says nothing, but he moves a Preacher across the board.  
 

_vi_

"To your own what?" the Doctor asks without preamble, sitting on the stool next to him.

"To your own self be true?" the Master offers, looking up. He pulls a face. "You're not still wearing that jacket, are you?"

"There's nothing wrong with it. It's the height of sartorial--"

"Perhaps it has so blinded you that you can not find your ridiculously immense wardrobe?" The Master suggests affably, waving the servitor over. "Or did you give all the good ones away to companions already?"

"To your own what?" the Doctor says heavily, ignoring this. The servitor beeps at him and he irritatedly orders a rum and coke. The neons on the optics have nothing on his coat, though they reflect in glittering rainbows from the iridescent cat pinned to a lapel.

Battle in vain, the Master thinks, but what he says is, "Nice badge."

"I collect," the Doctor says dryly. "I believe I asked you a question."

"I was a woman once," the Master says, and sips at his own drink -- some peculiarly human thing, mustard and cherries. "Regenerations upon regenerations ago now. You should try it. A change of perspective and all that. Ah," he corrects himself, "but you always just get what you get, don't you? No control. I mean, look at yourself."

"I have a noble brow!"

"Well," the Master smiles. "Quite."

"I'm afraid I fail to see the relevance of your answer to my question; in point of fact, I'm rather sure it didn't have one. Come on. On _Sarn_. In the _flames_. To your own _what_, hmm?"

"There's no such thing as history." The Master rolls his glass between his palms, back and forth, back and forth. "There's just anecdotes. The little things we cherish; the little things we blurt out when half drunk and alone in some tiny bar; the little things our mothers told us." He chuckles. "How does it go -- 'His time is the End of Time / And his Moment time's undoing.'"

"Fairy stories," the Doctor scoffs. "Children's rhymes. Nursery tales!"

"The best kind!" The Master chuckles. "Remember the Toclafane? Oh, they were such beauties. Or -- ho! The one that frightened you most, Doctor. The shadowy youth with a blade and only one arm, caught outside of time in an existential loop, forever existing and not, half-living in the eternal glory and torment of his own making: Grandfather Paradox."

"The laws of Time as taught to babies," the Doctor says flatly.

"So freshly loomed we're still wet behind the weave, I know." The Master empties his glass and slides it over for the servitor to refill. "And every time I think of it," he softly sings, "It simply drives me wild. / For now I have become / The strangest case you ever saw--"

The Doctor makes a noise of disgust, pushing his own, half-finished glass away, dragging wet circles across the bar. "That's going to be stuck in my head all day now."

"Would you prefer something else?" the Master asks.

There's a sudden scream from outside, high-pitched, carrying, familiar.

"Mel!" cries the Doctor, leaping to his feet.

The Master, almost smiling, sings, "Zagreus sees you in your bed, / and eats you when you're sleeping."

The Doctor glares. "What have you done?"

"Oh, so many things." The Master toasts the Doctor with his glass. "This one is all yours though, I'm afraid. Cracks and monsters, my dear fellow; cracks and monsters." The Doctor huffs and turns on his heel, storming out. "Say hello to Andromeda for me," the Master calls after him. "There's a good fellow."

The servitor brings him another glass.  
 

_vii_

"Neither flux, nor wither, nor change its state," the Master says.

The Doctor tries, "You've always been--"

"The Professor to your Holmes?" the Master offers. He's reading the letter, the one Romana gave the Doctor, detailing the Act of Master Restitution, a feeble attempt to make nice with the Daleks, long after the hornet's nest had been irrevocably stirred. "They will exist as long as you do, Doctor. You know that."

There's a hard-light construct of boards and pieces between them. After some deliberation, the Doctor moves his White Star up. The Master reaches out without looking or hesitation, and crosses his path with Death.

"Are you being symbolic?" the Doctor asks, something like amusement in his voice.

"You can't have the Doctor without the monsters," the Master insists. "For all your running. Forwards, backwards, sideways in time. We all learn it in Time. The Web doesn't spread; it wraps around itself, strand after strand until we all have rope enough for the hanging."

He moves a Magistrate back on itself. The Doctor razes a Castle. They both consider each other through the semi-translucent light.

"I can't save you from this," the Doctor says sadly.

"No Nitro-9, hidden up your sleeve?" They smile faintly at each other. "You won't save me," the Master agrees. "But one day I shall come back. Yes, one day, I shall come back. Until then--"

"Do you have to?" the Doctor sighs.

"Just go forward in all your beliefs," the Master says. "Onwards and upwards, until you've come around to the beginning again and you realise all you're left with is you, alone, for all your companions; always and forever alone in the dark."

The Doctor exchanges a Pawn for an Emperor. The Master exchanges an Emperor for a Pawn.

"I believe that's stalemate," the Master says. He smiles. There is a pen in his hand, and he scribes an eight-word sentence on the back of Romana's letter in quick, neat copper-plate before folding it over. "Excuse me," he says, and stands. "I have an extermination to attend."

Whistling a jaunty, familiar tune, he walks away, his silent guards trundling on either side, eye-stalks sweeping slowly, left and right, left and right, left and right.

The Doctor pulls the letter close, but doesn't read it. He remembers what it's always said.

'I am he as you are he as you are me   
And we are all together.'

LENNON / MCCARTNEY -  
'I Am the Walrus'

**Author's Note:**

> Bonus feature: original extended ending:
> 
> _viii_
> 
> Amnesia makes everything easy.
> 
> _x-c_
> 
> River calls him Dorothy before she dies.


End file.
